Worker-Driven Social Responsibility

Skepticism in academic, policy and advocacy circles about the effectiveness of top-down corporate social responsibility initiatives approaches has begun to shift attention to bottom-up approaches based on worker participation and voice. Worker-driven social responsibility (WSR) aims to make lead companies liable for conditions in their supply chains and put workers and their representative organisations, rather than corporations, in the driving seat of efforts to improve workers conditions. Key features of WSR models are the involvement of workers and their representatives in determining and monitoring standards, and access by workers to legally binding complaint mechanisms that are enforceable against lead firms.